If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

- George Washington

Saturday, 17 March 2012

Nokia win

Yesterday, I was rummaging through a box of junk while clearing out the study for a bit of redecoration. And I found the phone I have been looking for. My old faithful Nokia 6310i, which was on my desk (under a pile of power supplies, portable drives, wireless dongles and millions of connecting cables) and had then been swept into an old green Safeway box as part of the Nowhere Towers Clearances.

I have been searching for it for quite a while, as I have it as an emergency phone with a PAYG simcard, and it needs switching on and a call made every so often to keep the SIM alive. I think I last held the phone three months ago, but it could easily be four or even six.

19 comments:

I have an old faithful 6310i as a spare too. Been dropped twice, submerged twice and lost in a forest in the rain for an hour (until I found someone who could phone it for me). Battery life: a week; I'm lucky if my new Blackberry does till tea time. Great,great piece of kit.

I get about 10 days on standby, but then I don't make many calls. As I have proved, battery life when switched off is months rather than weeks. I wouldn't expect that from a lead-acid bike battery. OK, the 6310i doesn't have many fancy features to consume power, but it's still awesome performance. My iPhone, by contrast, needs charging every 2-3 days. More often if I actually make some calls.

I'm still using a venerable Nokia NSE-3210, the battery of which has an expiry date of 10th October 2001. One charge lasts at least a week. I make and receive phone calls only, because that's what a phone is for.I have a camera with which to take pictures and a decent fountain pen with which to write letters.

I actually like my iPhone for all the things it does - it's a very handy bit of kit. But not as a phone, where its performance is mediocre. Perhaps I should keep the iPhone as a sort of PDA and use the Nokia for actual calls.

funnily enough, that's why I got the second one. The first one started doing that, and by that time Nokia had stopped making them. I managed to find a NOS one on eBay and paid good money to have it. Battered, neglected, sat on, abused, dropped ... still works fine, a bit like the VW in Woody Allen's 'Sleeper'.

Ericsson R250 pro, simply the phone of the gods. I have knocked a nail in with one and it worked afterwards! It is designed to be washed under a tap and the speaker phone can be heard on the building site it was designed for.

OK the downside, it is the size of a brick and heavy enough to leave your trousers round your ankles. However the battery life in a drawer is over six months..